morning; they could be pushed along a bit faster with no harm happening
to them. She eyed her watch from time to time with a grin of amusement,
but suppressed the temptation to look and see how Mustafa Ali was
taking it, for her action might be seen and misconstrued.

When the time she had set herself was up she rose and walked slowly
towards the group of Arabs. The guide's face was sullen, but she took
no notice, and, when they started, motioned him to her side again with
a reference to Biskra that provoked a flow of words. It was the last
place she wanted to hear of, but it was one of which he spoke the
readiest, and she knew it was not wise to allow him to remain silent to
sulk. His ill-temper would evaporate with the sound of his own voice.
She rode forward steadily, silent herself, busy with her own thoughts,
heedless of the voice beside her, and unconscious of the fact when it
became silent.

She had been quite right about the capabilities of the horses. They
responded without any apparent effort to the further demand made of
them. The one in particular that Diana was riding moved in a swift,
easy gallop that was the perfection of motion.

They had been riding for some hours when they came to the first oasis
that had been sighted since leaving the one where the midday halt was
made. Diana pulled up her horse to look at it, for it was unusually
beautiful in the luxuriousness and arrangement of its group of palms
and leafy bushes. Some pigeons were cooing softly, hidden from sight
amongst the trees, with a plaintive melancholy that somehow seemed in
keeping with the deserted spot. Beside the well, forming a triangle,
stood what had been three particularly fine palm trees, but the tops
had been broken off about twenty feet up from the ground, and the